Two links to Marco Arment within a few days? Well, if you make good points: "Many Windows developers were upset that iOS development had to be done on a Mac, but it didn't hurt Apple: the most important developers for iOS apps were already using Macs. But the success of Windows 8 and Windows Phone in the consumer space requires many of those consumer-product developers, now entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, to care so much about Windows development that they want to use Windows to develop for it. How likely is that?" As usual a bit too Apple-centric (he implies - as explicit as possible while still being implicit - that only iOS developers can create great applications), but his point still stands. Judging by the abysmal quality of Microsoft's own Metro applications (Mail, Video, Music, People, IE10, etc.), even Microsoft doesn't know how to create great Metro applications.

Are you kidding me? You can't categorise companies of this size as "creative" and "not creative". All companies have some great folks and some complete idiots.

At what point did I say otherwise?

With things like Metro, Kinect, Surface, Wordament, Kinectimals & on{x} Microsoft has shown that the idiots are at least not in the majority

I wouldn't be so sure about that where Metro is concerned. They are, after all, trying to force a touch screen paradigm on to a medium that isn't suited to it (keyboard and mouse). Which Surface are you referring to, the tablet (wow, another tablet), or the project that came before it with that name? The latter was, at least, an interesting idea. Microsoft seems, at least where their Metro division is concerned, to be in a "me too" mode lately. They've essentially copied everything about iOS except the user interface and programming APIs. Locked down, check. Optimized only for touch, check. Make it extremely simple, check. Make developers pay to develop for it, check. I think they really have room to do a lot more than this if only they were permitted to do so. In fact, it would be a really good marketing move for them if they did deviate from this formula.

I agree with you on the stupidity of making devs paying.
I don't agree about your other points you made but at this early stage we are all speculating. Let's let it rest and see what happens during the coming months...